


That Old Pagan Thing

by Meridians_of_Madness



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Priests, Anal Fingering, Angst, Bad Theology, Death, Drinking, Hospice, Kissing, Loss of Faith, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:29:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29237610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meridians_of_Madness/pseuds/Meridians_of_Madness
Summary: Priests behaving badly.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 107
Collections: Clerical Omens





	That Old Pagan Thing

**On Wednesday**

There's a hole inside Crowley where God used to be.

He could feel the edges of it sometimes, jagged and sharp like a cannonball had gone through and left splinters in its wake. On bad nights, he was afraid he might fall in, because if a hole was big enough to swallow the almighty, what might it do to him, poor weak thing he was?

Most days, it was bearable, even if he never quite learned the trick of ignoring it. Some days, it's not, and then everyone got about half of him, generously speaking, with the other half quietly screaming through midweek services, through confirmation classes, through Sunday and the endless needs of an East End parish that was getting sparser and grayer by the year.

It was only when the screaming got too loud that things became a problem, and by the wisdom of Bishop Michaels, it was decided that Crowley needed a change of scenery _._

“To be perfectly blunt,” she said, “you badly frightened Mrs Carstairs with your ranting about the limits of human kindness.”

“I'm sorry, all right?” Crowley said, covering his face. “It's just...”

“Yes, we _know_ ,” said Bishop Michaels, because she had heard it before.

(Not all of it. She was a good one, but Crowley knew better than to talk about all of the screaming going on his hollow places).

“And that's why we're sending you to Tadfield. Perhaps a new placement might help you adjust, find your feet. You can decide if ministry is really the right life for you.”

And he and his questions would be out of her hair, was the implication, so Crowley packed up his single suitcase and caught the late bus out. He figured he could catch a cab to the rectory, but instead there was a calm man with his hands held patiently in front of him waiting at the bus stop. A light rain was falling, turning the street to silver, but the man stood out from the shelter, head tilted up to enjoy the early fall drizzle.

“Anthony Crowley,” he said by way of greeting, “A fine night.”

Crowley couldn't quite tell if it was a greeting, sarcasm or simply an observation. There was something too still about the other man, something waiting and watchful and not altogether comfortable.

“Er, yeah, if you like,” he said. “You're the rector, right? Sorry, I don't remember your name...”

Which was a fantastic way to get things started, but the other priest only smiled.

“Aziraphale Fell,” he said. “A double inheritance from both sides of my family that turned out to be a bit of a tongue-twister, I'm afraid. But I do not mean to keep you, especially not in the wet.”

He opened up an enormous umbrella, holding it aloft with a natural graciousness that twinged something in Crowley's hollow bits.

 _As if it didn't matter who I was,_ Crowley mused, stepping under the shade _. As if I could be anybody._

He could be anybody.

He could try, anyway.

**On Sunday**

The impression that Aziraphale Fell gave was of a kind and temperate man, one who perhaps liked his well-appointed study and the cakes that this parishioner or that one was always leaving him a little too much. At least, that was the impression that Crowley had of him until Sunday, when Aziraphale placidly ascended to the lectern.

He smiled at his congregation and proceeded to drop such a weight of fire and brimstone on them that Crowley was surprised they didn't leave with their ears smoking. Apparently there were dire consequences for not loving thy neighbor, and Aziraphale had no problem elucidating which neighbors they were meant to love, which was to say all of them, every single one, or there would be _consequences_. It was both a very good point and more than slightly terrifying, and by the time they got to the greetings at the end of the service, Crowley felt a little as if he had been blown around by a storm at sea.

He watched Aziraphale a little warily after that, gave him a wide berth when they passed each other in the rectory where Crowley had been assigned a bedroom. There was a shy lad by the unlikely name of Newt in to tidy up and do the shopping, and since Crowley tended to subsist on coffee anyways, he managed to avoid Aziraphale for a while.

Then one night later that week, the fourth in which his dreams hissed and roared in his ear, Crowley rose from his bed and wandered out into the garden under the full moon.

The rectory garden by night was different than the garden by the day. The grass seemed longer, the hedgerow denser as if it was hiding something behind it. The saint in her niche at the rear garden wall looked different as well, as if she might have offered up mysteries rather than miracles, and the man who sat on the bench at her feet smoking a cigarette was a most unlikely worshiper.

Crowley was too slow and sleep-dazed to withdraw before Aziraphale saw him, but Aziraphale only gazed at him with a calm and reptilian surmise before nodding up at the saint.

“Saint Agnes of Blythe,” he said as if he were making an introduction at a party. “She foretold the loss of a great pagan chieftain at war with the papal armies, and when she refused to recant her prediction, they burned her at the stake.”

“Poor thing,” Crowley said, wrapping his arms around himself. It was warm for early fall, but a chill ran up his spine at Aziraphale's matter-of-fact words.

“They drew and quartered the chieftain when he was defeated,” continued Aziraphale casually. “Sent a limb to each corner of Christianland and his head back to his widow. I do not know what they did with his trunk, though. I assume it was buried in some unconsecrated place of rot and ruin.”

 _“Incivility has consequences,_ ” Crowley said with a shiver. Earlier that day, he had overheard Aziraphale counseling an older couple through a difficult time in his study, something about finances and inattention. That Aziraphale had been kind and thoughtful, even funny, and he would never have spoken so easily about drawings and quarterings. This Aziraphale in front of him now might do anything.

“Ah, so you were paying attention to my sermon,” Aziraphale said, pleased. “I shouldn't like to think I was boring you right off the bat.”

“It wasn't boring, I'll give you that. But... bit harsh, don't you think?”

“I think that I deliver an old-fashioned good time,” Aziraphale said lazily. “The rest of the week, people come to the rectory for comfort and consolation. Sunday, they come for something different. Why shouldn't I offer them a variety?”

 _Because you can't scare people into being better,_ Crowley might have said, but he only shook his head.

“Didn't think you were that kind of priest, that's all,” he muttered, and Aziraphale smiled, showing some teeth.

“What kind of priest did you hope I was?” he asked with interest, and then before Crowley could incriminate himself further, he shook his head.

“Where are my manners. Do you care for one?”

He held out his pack of cigarettes, still almost new with only a few taken out.

“I quit five years ago,” Crowley said, but Aziraphale didn't take the pack away. Instead, he only titled his head and smiled, and something like a hook dropped into that deep hollow inside Crowley again, searching, searching...

“I'm fine,” he said shortly, turning and walking away.

It should have felt like a victory, but it didn't. Instead, it felt like the first drag of heat down his throat that he still craved like burning too many nights. It felt like a smile that knew too much and the pass of a careless hand down his bare back.

**On Tuesday**

They might have stayed at wary odds forever if Kenneth Croswell hadn't died.

“They caught it too late,” Aziraphale said on the drive over to the hospice. “Miserable thing, lung cancer. He's been hanging on since March, and everyone will be pleased to see him go.”

Crowley bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood, and he was more than ready to cordially push Aziraphale straight out of a window if he caught a single whiff of his disdain near the dying man. However, there was another one of his transformations as soon as he got out of the car, and Aziraphale became the proper priest who wouldn't even cut across the lawn to gain the entryway.

“Good afternoon, Kenneth,” Aziraphale said upon entering the shabby little room. “They tell me you've had a rough night.”

“Bloody awful,” the man wheezed tiredly. “How long have I got you, father?”

Aziraphale smiled and took his seat by the man's bed.

“Why, for as long as you are kind enough to have me,” he said, and Crowley, almost against his will, believed it.

He stayed, they both did, reading at times, listening at others. It was a long and miserable vigil, Crowley's least favorite kind of ministry, but from beginning to end, Aziraphale was calm, kind, steady as a rock, and wry in a way that made the reality of the whole ordeal somehow more bearable. They saw it out to the end, performing the sacrament of unction and then sidestepping the hospice nurses when Croswell's vitals dropped like rocks.

 _Dying's a slow business until it's fast,_ Crowley thought, and when Kenneth Croswell breathed his last, or rather, gasped it, groaned it, and finally exhaled it in a messy froth of blood and other fluids, he ran to the bathroom to be sick.

He scrubbed his face with cold water, feeling as if he had failed some kind of test, but when he slunk back to the car, Aziraphale only offered him his cigarettes again. This time, Crowley accepted, and he wasn't sure anything had been as much a relief as that first drag after the last five years.

“You can quit again tomorrow,” Aziraphale said on the ride back to the rectory. “I certainly won't tell anyone.”

“You're a bastard,” Crowley said, taking another cigarette from Aziraphale's pack.

“Of course.”

Aziraphale sounded pleased, as if Crowley was a student who had finally gotten his sums right, and Crowley gave him a narrow look.

“What are you going to do tonight?” he asked almost accusingly, and Aziraphale took his eyes off the road to glance at him with a hint of amusement.

“Well, Mrs Penney dropped off that rather nice cut of roast beef yesterday, so I was thinking sandwiches, some good scotch, and then perhaps that new show, _Bridgerton,_ deserves some time. And you, are you planning on weeping your poor eyes out over a man you only met twice?”

“He deserves some compassion, you know.”

“And I gave it to him for as long as he was here to receive it, and if there is anything of him left to be comforted, it is well beyond my ability now. If you want to cry over Kenneth Croswell, you are welcome to do so, but frankly, I'll be the only one listening from the living room.”

“No one else,?” Crowley asked, fiddling with the unlit cigarette. He could smoke it if he wanted to. He also might not.

They pulled up to the rectory, and for a moment, Aziraphale didn't get out, and he didn't look at Crowley.

“I don't think He's listened to us for a very long time,” Aziraphale said. “But if you need to cry it out, I will be listening, if it is any help.”

“From the living room. While watching _Bridgerton_ and hoping I keep it down because otherwise you might miss it when Daphne and Simon finally get together.”

“The chemistry between the pair is shocking, and yes, the walls in this place are rather thin, so if you could only weep _quietly...”_

“Think I'd rather have that sandwich and some scotch, if you're sharing,” Crowley said, pocketing his cigarette, and Aziraphale smiled, pleased.

“Of course I'm sharing,” he said, and they went in together.

**On Monday**

The beginning of December was always a weird time for a church. There was the promise of bright Christmas lights in the distance, but the days were long enough that just about everyone was ready to turn pagan and stab winter with a sprig of mistletoe if it only got them a bit more light.

“Seriously,” Crowley said draped face down over the couch. “I swear that if it brought the sun back one day earlier, if it demonstrably made winter one inch less long, I would do it. I'd... I'd wear a bearskin and run naked through the woods, paint m'self blue, howl at the moon, whatever it takes.”

Aziraphale had had at least as much scotch as Crowley had, but he sat up straight in his chair.

“What a sight that would be,” he said in that precise way that meant he was utterly sloshed. “And what a loss it would be, to lose you to the pagans.”

“Yeah, it'd break your heart to draw an'... draw an'... split me open.”

“Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind.”

“Hey, I didn't know you were saving that almond cake for something special, did I? The kids needed a treat. We'd just gone over the death of the firstborn, and I was afraid Adam Young was going to go off and found his own religion if I didn't get something sweet into them right quick.”

“That cake was- never mind.”

Something about the way Aziraphale said it struck Crowley as hilarious, and he laughed until he bumped down onto the floor. Then he turned over on his stomach and slithered up to Aziraphale, sitting up to lean his elbows on Aziraphale's knees.

“Hey. Hey. I know you, you old sinner,” he said with a grin. “You wanted to rip me to little bits.”

“Hm.”

“You wanted to tear me apart.”

“If you say so.”

“You wanted to- wanted to-”

He never found the word he was looking for because Aziraphale's hand came up to fist in his hair, pulling him up and back for a kiss that was as much savage as it was drunk, and it was very drunk.

It was like a punch to the center of the chest, stunning, hard enough that he thought he might never stop feeling it, and then his hands were latched in Aziraphale's shirt, holding on to him and kissing him back just as wildly.

It was a messy, sloppy, awful (beautiful) thing, and all Crowley could think after, when they drew back and stared at each other in shock, was that he couldn't feel that hollowness inside him anymore.

“We... are very drunk,” Aziraphale said at last.

“Not that drunk,” Crowley countered.

“Yes. That drunk. I am going to bed.”

“Don't.”

_Don't stop now. Don't leave me. Don't throw me away. Don't, please don't._

“I am. I shall go to bed, and I shall have a shameful hangover in the morning when I oversee the food pantry. I'll... I'll see you for lunch, though?”

Crowley clasped his hands loosely in front of him, sitting back on his heels. It was something. It was better than he deserved.

“Yeah. See you for lunch tomorrow.”

**On Thursday**

Here's the thing about living with someone, working with them, helping them and accepting their help day in and day out: it never leaves you unmarked. It can't.

You to stay distant and hold yourself apart, you try to do what you know you've been called to do. He doesn't offer you cigarettes anymore, and you quit again, but this time it's easy.

The last time you quit smoking, God was involved, some combination of guilt and faith and righteousness all combining to help you kick the habit. This time, God's not around anymore, but _he_ is, and that feels.

Well.

That feels just fine, because you're used to wanting things you can't have, aren't you? You're amazing at it, top notch, five stars. Hell, who would you be if you got what you wanted? You wouldn't be a priest anymore, that was for sure, and neither would he.

So you can't have it, but you can want it, and you're almost okay with that (you're not, but even in the darkest pits of your poor brain, you'll say you are) and then summer hits, and everything changes again.

-

Summer rolled over Tadfield like a great sopping-wet hot towel, and while the heat only left Crowley feeling nicely loose and relaxed in the limbs, the same could not be said for Aziraphale.

“When I was a boy, we didn't even know priests had skin,” he mumbled, resting his head on his arms at the kitchen table. “Barely knew they had legs under those robes. What does a priest need legs for? Or skin? I tell you.”

Crowley, with markedly less reservations, had changed into shorts and a T-shirt after the Thursday night study group, and he sipped at the iced coffee that Anathema had bought for him. She was a weird little thing, a good forty years younger than the rest of the group, but intense enough for all of them. There to study comparative theology, she had said, and that was fine with Crowley, especially if she kept the caffeine coming.

“C'mon, at least pick up a few short-sleeved shirts,” Crowley said, slurping his drink just to see Aziraphale flinch. “Won't kill you.”

“It might,” Aziraphale retorted. “You don't know.”

“Well, I already know that you have skin. And legs too. What's the harm?”

“And a girl that will chew gum will smoke, and a girl who smokes will drink, and everyone knows what a girl who drinks will do,” said Aziraphale. “No, thank you.”

“I dunno about gum, but I already know that you smoke and drink. What else would you do?”

“Pick you up bodily, deposit you on the doorstep, and lock you out so that everyone could see you in that ridiculous T-shirt.”

“Hey, the Them really believe I _am_ the world's okayest priest,” said Crowley, patting the logo on his chest with some pride. “And anyway, I don't believe you _can_ lift me. After all, I'm not a spoonful of raspberry parfait or New York-style cheesecake so pardon me if- _hey!”_

Suddenly he was scooped up out of his chair and hefted up against Aziraphale's chest. Damn him, but he really did seem to be expending the same effort as he would for a spoonful of cake, and none of Crowley's writhing or struggling deterred him.

“Hey, put me down, you sorry excuse for a community leader,” Crowley yelped. “You can't do this to me!”

“It looks rather like I am,” Aziraphale said, heading for the door. “And if it cannot be cool in here, at least it might be _quiet.”_

“Nrrrgh!”

Crowley struggled with, all right, not all his might, because if he got past the laughing protests, he would get to a place where it would feel good, _so_ good to be touched, to be hauled around by Aziraphale's (apparently terrifying) strength, where he would do something utterly stupid and ruin one of the most functional relationships he had ever maintained in his life.

Somehow he managed to get twisted around to the point where he slipped half out of Aziraphale's arms without getting his legs properly underneath him, and Aziraphale swore and grabbed him up again, which all right, kind of him, but it wasn't like Crowley couldn't take a little bumping and-

And then Aziraphale's hand slid under the back of Crowley's T-shirt as if it belonged there, warm and a little sweaty against his spine, and the jolt of electricity that came from that single touch alone made them both freeze. It was like rain after a drought, but Crowley didn't like to think what ugly plants might grow if he let them.

“Put me down,” he said quietly, and without breaking his gaze, Aziraphale slowly shook his head.

“Put me down,” he said again, but his hands fisted in Aziraphale's shirt, and he might have said it a third time if he hadn't just given up and leaned into the kiss he had been craving since December, hell, possibly since the night after Kenneth Croswell died.

Aziraphale was still for a long moment, as if all of his strength and consciousness was dedicated to holding Crowley up and submitting to the kiss. When he started to return it, when his lips parted and the tip of his tongue ran gently over Crowley's lower lip, Crowley's hands shifted to clasp loosely around Aziraphale's neck. Suddenly he was less afraid that Aziraphale would drop him. He was suddenly less afraid of a lot of things.

“I could keep saying _no_ if you wanted,” Crowley said half-seriously. “We could make this dark and nasty and mean.”

“Must we?”

Crowley sighed, because there were old shadows in him, a life better abandoned and choices that he had decided to call choices because at the age of forty-two, he still couldn't quite face up to them.

“I would, for you, if that's what it took,” he offered, and something in him stuttered when Aziraphale smiled that grim old smile he had grown to love.

“I don't need that kind of nonsense,” he said a little scornfully, and Crowley let out a soft breath, leaning in to press his forehead against Aziraphale's with something like relief.

“Show me what you need,” he whispered, and Aziraphale took a firmer grip on him and started to walk towards his bedroom.

On Friday

There was a moment in the very early morning hours on Friday where Crowley was sure he couldn't. Not that he didn't want to, not that he wouldn't, not that he was disinclined, but that he simply physically _couldn't_. Then Aziraphale curled behind him again, one arm wrapped around Crowley's chest, and the other hand sliding back behind him and between his legs, where everything so slippery and hot and open.

“Oh come on, what've you got to prove?” Crowley nearly wailed, and then he groaned when Aziraphale sank sharp teeth into his shoulder.

“Nothing to prove,” Aziraphale said, pushing three fingers deep into him again. They'd been at it for so long that Crowley was actually too tired to resist it, and didn't _that_ thought send a shiver down Crowley's spine.

“Then why-?”

“Because I have wanted you for so long. Because you are beautiful. Because if you regret this in the morning, I want to make sure that it was worth regretting.”

Crowley whined and rocked himself on Aziraphale's fingers, the waves of pleasure coming with increasing urgency.

 _I won't,_ he tried to tell Aziraphale. _I couldn't, not with you, no matter how we did it._

Then he was crying out, helpless and exalted, and he thought he would never think himself empty again.

On Saturday

Saturday, they put their clothes back on and went to have a talk.

“No, not your study,” Crowley said when Aziraphale reached for the door. “I'm not Mrs Welty who thinks you can bless her sore hip better.”

They ended up at the kitchen table where they had started, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.

“It's not like it's a sin,” Crowley said finally.

“Of course it is,” Aziraphale said in surprise, and Crowley winced.

“Look...”

“Ask me how much I care about sinning,” Aziraphale said patiently, and if there was any residual guilt to him, he hid it well.

“You're not always a very good priest, you know that?”

“May I point out, _you're_ the one who has decided that you are the arbiter of what a sin is and what isn't? If you truly believe it's not a sin, then perhaps you ought to go back and catch up on some reading.”

“It's not _wrong_ ,” Crowley insisted, and Aziraphale shook his head.

“No.”

Crowley let out a breath and then had to catch it again when Aziraphale leaned across the table to brush the ball of his thumb across his cheek. The gesture was tender, soft, and if anyone had seen it, completely and utter undeniable.

 _Oh, we're fucked,_ he thought.

“It's only love,” Aziraphale said. “That's all.”

**Author's Note:**

> -This is for a housewarming present for a friend. Hope your new place is amazing!
> 
> -Okay, I think I mighta lurched into Demon!Aziraphale characterization for this one. I hope it still works. For some reason, Crowley's still mostly Crowley whichever side of the line he's standing on.


End file.
